I saw that one guy at MS ate butter around midnight once. Somebody top that? Could also be, most painful story. 3600 hours on a project...and it gets axed as you finish it. Can anybody prove truth is stranger than fiction?

A long time ago I used to pull lots of 24/36 hour shifts rather than ask for more devs. At about 3 am one night a bat flew past my head which freaked me out. I followed the bat, and then started to hear a loud pounding sound - I walked to the lobby to
see what it was, pretty freaked out, and it was coming from the pool table!

I walked over to the pool table, and it was coming from the floor below (construction work at 3 am!)

In 1978 I was working for a software development and consultant company, with the duty of coding an "Unitary Costs Application" targeted to the Construction Industry (programming in
Clipper with a 286 desktop), here in México... One day, after I have spent about a week trying to find a bug... Just when the clock gived the time to go out of work, I shoot down the desktop
and without thinking any else, but escaping from what have became a jail to me those last days, I switch off suddenly the power source... At my very side (the developer's room was quite small), have been working for her first day a very young analyst, in drawing
a complicated flow diagram, but she was the whole eight working hours, utterly unaware about saving her work from time to time... She haven't saved it any time yet...

She pursued me running furiously at my back, trying to beat my poor head on the floor of the big building where our office was located... We both gotten a fair and kind friendship several weeks after.

The power down thing. Pretty good. thanks. What's the most difficult painful part of being a developer? boss interrupting? coworkers = idiots? long hours? hardware / is issues?

To read the introduction brief of any new development technology or tool and know you need just that to get in success with precisely the client of the day... And know he wouldn't spare you any bit of time else to learn it before getting his work finished,
even though the smart arguments you could give to him about the convenience of using that new technology or tool on his very benefit... I used to get mad every time such an uggly thing have happened to me.

'Twas late in the day, after much coding,
And my code was not compiling,
A class member it could not find,
Foo.GetPrincipals was not in existance (what a pain in my behind),
But, forsooth, it was there in yon API!

Upon hearing my lamentations,
The customer support director examined my creations,
And verily, she did see the root of my concern,
"It is spelled 'principles', you silly intern!"
Oops.

Not as a dev, but in my first role, as a mainframe support monkey and general PC support and network spod.

Those of you who haven't worked in a large company don't know the pain of month end Friday, where the accounts department demand and run numerous reports which must be done before 5pm. Year end Friday is worse.

So it was year end Friday. There I was, feet on the System/38 console, dozing off after lunch to the hum of the air conditioners, and the low buzz of the Direct Access Storage Devices (that's disk drives to you).

The head operator and the student placement were mucking about by the tape safe and the main door, a mock fight, with stupid run ups, and circle punches.

Well the student ducked, the operator followed through with the mock punch. To the emergency power off by the door. Which didn't have a molly guard. The button you push as you rush out trying to escape the halon about to come rushing in. The button that cuts
power to all 3 mini computers, without any attempt at an orderly shut down.

There was a loud swear word uttered. I opened my eyes, and realised it was really really quiet. No computer noise. No air conditioners. No printers rattling.

I was in a date with my ex-bf. -- we were new back then so basically, were not that comfortable with each other yet. we were dining in a fancy fine dining restaurant when he felt he's tummy is cursing him to throw out all the shrimp he ate.
First I thought he was just playing with me because he sounds polite. He keeps on repeating "HONEY I WANNA THROW OUT" thank GOD we were sitting by the garden so I asked him to throw out there. -----Guess what???/ HE DID!! and he ran away leaving me alone =(

About 7 years ago I was working in Leeds in the UK for a legal firm. We were down on the ground floor, having some Oracle training, when suddenly the lights went out. We went outside in to the hall, and all the lights were out there, too. We all looked
at each other, our mouths slack with horror...

Just the week before we had been talking about how the UPS we had onour one UNIX server would only last a few minutes - and the time it took to safely shut down the server was only about 2 minutes less than the time the UPS would last. You have never seen a
group of geeks pound up stairs to get to a server room quicker...

Anyway, we made it - got everything safely shut down, and made our way outside, past the noise of muffled shouting from the lifts. Our company was on a junction, and just opposite was the Leeds offices of the Bank of England.

It turns out that power had gone down not just for us, but for the whole area. Sudenly there were sirens everywhere as every armed police officer in Leeds descended on the front of the Bank and leapt out of there cars brandishing guns. It wasnt a robbery, but
the power going down had triggered some kind of maximum alert... let me tell you - when you are used to living in a country where the Police do not usualy carry guns, suddenly seeing dozens of armed police looking for trouble is a little scary!

blowdart: god, that's great. horrible, but great. You know what I mean. But to clarify: one button shuts off power and sets off Halon fire extinguishers? Is that real--or were you being facetious? They actually have those? Where were you working—a nuclear
power plant? THIS IS THE BEST STORY TO DATE. CAN SOMEBODY TOP IT? PS. the date story was great...but I'm looking for developer centric stuff. Merci.

blowdart: god, that's great. horrible, but great. You know what I mean. But to clarify: one button shuts off power and sets off Halon fire extinguishers? Is that real--or were you being facetious? They actually have those? Where were you working—a nuclear
power plant? THIS IS THE BEST STORY TO DATE. CAN SOMEBODY TOP IT? PS. the date story was great...but I'm looking for developer centric stuff. Merci.

No no, the button to flood halon was outside the noc, and is key controlled, so when you are working inside, no-one can trigger it.

However if there is a fire you will obviously want to run outside, and trigger the halon if you have disabled it.

And before you do that you will want to cut all power to the room, otherwise it could get very messy.

So by the exit is the big red switch.

And it was a capaciter manufacturer company.

Oh, and when you're under the false floor and the head operator decides it would be funny to set up the halon alarm as a test; it's not.